Sermons

“Falling in Ruts”
Rev. Greg Ward
Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North
February 26th, 2006

Meditation:
Problems. I have problems. You have problems. We have problems. The world has problems. Problems that weigh against us. Lean on us. Press on us. Keep us trapped.

It may provide some comfort to know that no life on this earth has been exempt from problems. The Buddha is a good example. The story goes that, as a young prince, he was protected, from birth until just before he turned 30, from ever encountering any difficulties. All his needs were met. No problems.

Until one day he ventured outside his protection. And he encountered an old man, a sick man, a dead man and a holy man. This had a great impact on him. Enough that he renounced his protections and began to seek how it might be possible to follow a holy path that can transcend age, sickness, even death.

What he discovered was a path based on four noble truths – the first of which, we already observed. Life is suffering. But, he observed, suffering is only caused by attachment to transient things. And there is a way out of this attachment. And the path that leads out of attachments is also the path that leads out of suffering and into enlightenment.

This is sometimes hard for people who are not Buddhist to understand. But the purpose of this service is not an instruction in Buddhism. It is a primer in how religion – or any outlook on life – tries to help us acknowledge that in addition to external problems, we have to contend with our internal attachments. Its these attachments we are not so aware of that lead to suffering – as much as the problems we can see.

Think for a minute about something that has led to suffering, your own, for extended periods. Think about why you’ve struggled.

What follows is a poem. I want you to ask if it is one that has any truth for you. It is called “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters” and it is by Portia Nelson.

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost.
I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in.
It's a habit.
But, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Sermon:
Did anyone identify with that poem? Or am I just preaching to myself today?

Because this poem is the story of my life. And from the people I tend to talk to on a regular basis, I think we’ve been walking the same sidewalks.

They didn’t even have sidewalks when the Buddha was around, but it seems pretty clear he understood what it was like to have deep holes in them. Having a hole in your sidewalk is like one of those universal truths of life that transcend time and culture. Life is a sidewalk with a deep hole which we fall into again and again.

I thought the poem was funny. Partly because it was so true. And knowing it is somewhat universally true makes me feel less alone on this great journey. But it’s also a little depressing when I think of it. The sheer amount of time I’ve spent falling into holes, floundering, trying to get out. Experiencing the frustration of finding myself in one again. Thinking I knew better. It’s a little sad.

But I think the sadder part is realizing that the shortest chapter in the whole autobiography is the last one. Chapter Five: “I walk down another street.” There are twenty-seven sentences in the poem. Only one talks about finding our way out of suffering. The other twenty-six are about the work it takes to get there.

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost.
I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

As I pointed out, it is not uncommon to find ourselves unexpectedly falling down a hole. Holes are dispersed throughout life. They are not well marked. They are placed more or less arbitrarily. Privilege can help us avoid some. But no one can side step them all. At least no one who has any kind of life.

These are the holes that most lives fall into from time to time. They leave us feeling lost. Helpless. We feel resentful, saying it isn’t our fault. We may even search about for what we did to deserve having a hole like that put right in front of us.

There are various ways of trying to make sense of this feeling. I know of quite a few people who, from deep within the hole they had fallen into, would complain. And wonder ‘why?’ When I was a hospital chaplain they would call for me. Then they would listen as they went through one version or another of being pushed. And largely, I would notice that most people eventually made reference to a particular religious reasoning. One that was popular for a long time - back, during the time this country was founded. It was reasoning that emerged from tremendous hardship and struggle in the early colonies. Famine, disease, death. At that time, there was an amazing preacher – one of the most popular the world has ever known - named Jonathan Edwards - who had sufficient occasion to offer religious reasoning to why holes are so often placed in the sidewalk before us. One of his most famous sermons was called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” where he talked about the fate of human beings being like that of a little spider hanging from single thread above a burning caldron in the kitchen of impatient chef.

I was amazed how so many people’s religious understanding – centuries later - seemed to follow this metaphor. How it wasn’t fair and they were mad at God for putting the hole there in the first place and then for jiggling the thread they were hanging by and making them fall in. And then they were often mad because they could imagine God laughing while they were floundering in the hole.

I usually didn’t say much in these kinds of conversations. Usually, only that I would be mad at that kind of God, too. But I was really astounded that this particular outlook seemed to traverse across many different denominations. And was as popular with the un-churched as it was with the devout. Among the more curious, or adventurous, I sometimes postulated different ways of looking at our misfortunes. But I found myself surprised that, even though most of these people were upset with the way things were, and mad at God for flicking them off their dangling existence, they really didn’t want to switch metaphors. They weren’t interested in seeing it a different way. They had their perspective about ‘why?’ and even though it made them angry, they weren’t going to change it.

On the very rare occasions I would share with them the idea of Buddhism and the notion of the first noble truth that life is suffering. But because I didn’t have time to get into the intricacies of such a deep philosophy, I would usually substitute the modern version. You might have seen it on t-shirts or on the internet. It’s called “Stink Happens.”

Now you might know it by a different name. I don’t want to quibble in semantics. And the point is not to be profane. But I think it does serve to highlight that there are different ways to look at the same thing.

Now some of these are humorous, but beyond the humor, I hope it points out that there are very different ways to explain – or even justify - the same thing. And yet, even with all these different perspectives at our fingertips, our lives often demonstrate that there is a very human tendency to stay stuck in one – even when it isn’t working for us.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an uncommon chapter either. It’s one that takes up a whole lot of our lives. It involves more cries of unfairness. A lot of blaming our circumstances and other people for what happens to us. And we contrive elaborate plans to avoid seeing the holes we fall into.

We just can’t figure out why this keeps happening. It’s not our fault. And it’s not fair. We understand what the Buddha meant when he said that life is suffering. We just don’t know anything about getting to the next noble truth – attachment - that sometimes, it’s really more about us going down the same road day after day.

In his book, “The Road Less Travelled,” author M. Scott Peck starts his first chapter in the same vein as the Buddha. With these three words, “Life is difficult.”

He notes that a lot of people moan and complain at the weight of the world they carry insisting that life should be easy. They cry because they are saddled with an unfair burden due to their circumstance – their race or their class or their profession or their political affiliation. And yet they go about dealing with their problems like a pinball bounced from bumper to bumper – with no forethought, discipline or accountability.

“What makes life difficult,” says Peck, “is that the problem of confronting and solving life’s problems is a painful one. Problems invoke anxiety, frustration, anger, despair…. But it is exactly in the solving of problems that life finds meaning. Problems call forth courage and wisdom. They help us grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually. That is why we deliberately put problems before our children in school – to teach them.”

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those things that hurt, instruct.” It is for this reason that wise or successful people learn not to dread, but actually to welcome problems as opportunities.

But most of us are not so wise – or successful. “Almost all of us,” Peck continues, “to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate, hoping they will go away. We ignore them, forget them, or pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in clearing our mind, to deaden our selves to the pain problems cause. We attempt to skirt around them instead of meeting them head on. To get out of them rather than suffer through them.”

And so we stay stuck in them. In the same fashion that most theologians and psychologists point to when they look at the Greek and English literature. Mythologist Joseph Campbell points out this phenomenon when he talks about the hero’s journey to slay the dragon. If the hero goes out one day and escapes the dragon or avoids him, it only insures that the dragon will return the next day. True heroes cannot escape confrontation. Because heroes don’t become heroes without them. Without confrontation, heroes go home and drown their sorrows as Unitarian writer, Henry David Thoreau describes, “living lives of quiet desperation.”

This avoidance – this unconscious choice to remain in our ‘stuck-ness’ is what Peck claims, is the root of all mental illness. He’s not talking about institutional illness, but the same garden variety neuroses you and I live with all the time. The kind that we adopt early on in life as coping mechanisms for problems. Like using inappropriate tantrums or tears or failing to show up or any number of methods to avoid dealing with problems through direct and thoughtful action. This is what led Carl Jung to say, ‘Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.’ But it’s also the kind of substitute that leads to what the Buddha predicted: more time walking down the same path. And more suffering.

This morning, as I was saying my prayers, I was thinking of Toniann – who has been suffering from back pain. Some of you might have read her note from last night saying she has been unable to move. Sort of like a major physical cramp which needs our compassion.

But so to are there people who experience spiritual cramps, emotional cramps, intellectual cramps. That keep us in a stuck place. Unable to move. Until we’re ready to see a different way.

There comes a time where, after walking down the same street, falling in the same hole

that it all clicks. At some point the dots fall into place and, even though it’s the same scenario, we see something new in it: ourselves. And we see the lines that connect us to our problems.

There is an old exercise that has been used in countless graduate courses – whether they be in religion, psychology or marketing. Take a look at the two pictures at the top of your order of worship. To convey the notion of attachment, experiments are done such that a group is divided in two. Half are given a copy of the picture on the left hand side and half are given the one on the right. They are asked to write a paragraph on the person in the picture. Then, later on, when the group comes together, they all turn in their first picture and are given the picture on the bottom. The professor then, invariably asks someone to describe what they see and then observes their responses.

“Old hag?? What are you talking about?? She’s not more than 23!!
“Her?!? Beautiful!?! You’ve got to be joking”

Inevitably, someone has to hold up the picture and trace the lines, describing what they see. Then, one by one, participants begin experiencing moments of recognition. Epiphanies. Aha moments. Oh-I-get-it!-moments. And even still, after it comes in focus, when the pictures were taken away for a minute and then returned, most immediately see the image they were conditioned to see first and have to work at seeing with the new frame of reference again.

The more bound someone is to their initial way of seeing, the more powerful the aha moment that follows. The same thing that happens when we fall into the hole again. When we finally open our eyes and recognize that we’ve ‘done it again,’ we see something new – something of ourselves in how we got there. It can be so absurd, it can make you laugh. But sometimes just the size or the painfulness of the problem we seem to be stuck in – and the suffering it brings – keeps us crying.

In his book, The Seven Habits, Stephen Covey tells about a Sunday subway ride in New York. Some riding quietly. Some reading newspapers. Others lost in thought.

Covey writes: “…suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed in the car. The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth throwing things, even grabbing people’s papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.

It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild like that and do nothing. It was easy to see that everyone in the car was irritated, too. Finally, I turned to him and said, ‘Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?’

The man lifted his gaze as if to come to consciousness of the situation for the first time an said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think. I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.

Think about how differently we might respond if we just saw some scenes from different points of view. The term, ‘paradigm shift’ was introduced by Thomas Kuhn in his highly influential landmark book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Kuhn showed how almost every significant breakthrough in the field of scientific endeavor is first a break with tradition, with old ways of thinking, with old paradigms.

What it describes is our penchant to remain stuck in frames of reference – and therefore stuck in our ruts of ending up in the same hole over and over again – until we stop refusing to involve ourselves in seeing our world differently. Until we stop insisting it isn’t our fault, until we exercise or stretch enough to get out of our cramped position - we will remain stuck in our attachments – in our patterns of going down the same street and falling in the same hole. Until we stop, we will never see any other noble truths – telling us that there is a way out of our suffering.

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

There comes a time when we are ready to try a different way. Which doesn’t mean we aren’t still tempted by old patterns. We still have to walk by. We still probably skirt the edge. Look in. Just for old time’s sake.

Even after we begin exercising a new perspective, we continue to struggle with attachments. It has been demonstrated that even people, who overcome destructive habits and highly rigid patterns will – for quite some time afterward – defend the people who continue to fall in the same hole they just crawled out of. They’ll defend them and say it’s not their fault. It’s not bad to have compassion. It’s only a problem if we remain confused as to whether we’re looking at the old hag or the beautiful woman. We still have to concentrate extra hard before it is natural to see something different before us. Something that points to a new path.

Even long after we recognize our attachments and learn to let them go – long after we see that religion asks us to embrace paradox – and being able to see the world from more than our current perspective, and stretch past our spiritual, emotional and mental cramps – we are still want to fall into a hole or two. The wise and successful don’t always avoid holes. We just don’t need to see the same ones every day.

The wise and successful come to realize that there are always new ways of seeing the world. That there’s a difference between comfortable routines and stuck places. That the only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions. The wise and successful realize there is more than one noble truth. And they set themselves up to explore them.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters – Portia Nelson

Adapted from anonymous sources

Peck, M. Scott – The Road Less Traveled; pg. 16

Thoreau, Henry David; Walden; pg. 3

Covey, Stephen; The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – pg. 27

Covey, Stephen; The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – pg. 30-1

Covey, Stephen; The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – pg. 29